docs: def open_and_parse_yaml(yamlfile):
          """
          :param file: String, path to file containing label-id mappings in
                               the first two columns of each row
          :return: dict where keys are labels and values are ids
          """
  
          # ??? what if the yaml file does not contain a dict datastructure?
          mapping = dict()
          if os.path.exists(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), yamlfile)):
              map_file = open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), yamlfile), 'r')
              mapping = yaml.safe_load(map_file)
              map_file.close()
          else:
              LOG.warning("file: %s not found", yamlfile)
  
          return mapping